By now, I’m sure you know that we didn’t win unfortunately. We came very close – with 8.5% of the first preference votes, very close to 30,000 first preference votes. Despite the significant surge behind Sinn Fein, as a result of them being the largest, most obvious austerity-critical force for many, the anti-capitalist Left vote increased – with a combined vote of over 15%. It’s unfortunate that because of a split in that vote and the impact on the perceived momentum in the campaign, it wasn’t enough to retain the Left seat won in Dublin by Joe Higgins five years ago. I would like to thank all of you for your support in the course of the campaign. It was the active support of many people from across Dublin that enabled us to run a very effective campaign that convinced so many people to vote for us. It also helped to popularise the need for a Left and socialist alternative, and will stand to us in the future. We are extremely proud of the exemplary work we did with the position for the last five years – as internationalist socialists. We made a difference to literally millions of people facing oppression and in struggle – from Kazakhstan to Palestine, from Sri Lanka to Bahrain, from Greece to Italy, from Turkey to Ireland of course, and so many other countries. In Ireland, we used the position to assist and promote many different struggles of working class people – from the battle against household and property taxes to playing a decisive role in turning the tide against JobBridge. Within the Parliament and in the Left Group, we left our mark. We won the respect of many others in GUE/NGL (left group) because of our consistent and principled stand for a socialist and internationalist position, together with the ability to work with others from different traditions. We are heading into extremely turbulent political times in Ireland. The results as a whole in the elections are good for the Left. Over 30 Left Councillors were elected across the country, including 14 Anti Austerity Alliance members. The highpoint is the election of Ruth Coppinger as a second TD for the Socialist Party The rise of Sinn Fein poses new challenges and also opportunities. It doesn’t at all negate the need to build a mass active movement and ultimately a party of the Left. It makes it more urgent. Working class people generally have passed a very severe judgement on the policies of austerity and the betrayal of the Labour Party at the ballot box. The first task now is to try to organise to ensure that even a portion of that is reflected in active participation in building a movement to resist the onslaught of austerity, which will continue despite all the talk of listening to the people. I will not be going away anywhere (apart from a well-deserved holiday!), and will continue to fight on the key issues that affect people in the coming months and years, for example JobBridge, Housing and Water Taxes. In particular though, I will be trying to continue to put forward a critique of and opposition to the capitalist economic orthodoxy which reigns and popularise a socialist alternative based on refusing to pay the debts that are not our debts and democratic planning for a sustainable economic recovery in Ireland and across Europe.
Posted on: Thu, 29 May 2014 17:29:58 +0000
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